To Charles Dickens, Christmas means Character: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”  A peace and goodwill to all. 

To Hamilton Wright Mabie, it’s a conspiracy… “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.”

But Phillips Brooks says it best for my heart, “The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung.”

Would you care to share a quote, or a verse… and, yes, I will be checking in on this Christmas Day!

Christmas, for me, is a message of commitment and care, of compassion and involvement.  ‘Incarnation’ is a fascinating word and concept – the idea and ideal of Character and Nobility becoming ‘flesh’ – tangible.  Perhaps there is an idea or an ideal that you would like to make a living, breathing, reality this coming year?  You could be a peace-maker, or a peace-bringer.  You could be an empath.  You could be kindness ‘incarnate’ – which, I’m told, is the true secret of being attractive!!!

If I may exceed my word limit today, as a gift from your tolerant self to me, I would close with some Thomas Hardy as my “Merry Christmas,” to you!

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.

Lex

A Moodscope member